Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust is Adding Another Vitola & Trimming Down the Umbagog Line

Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust is trimming down the Umbagog line with two vitolas but Steve Saka is adding another new vitola next year.

On Facebook, Steve Saka wrote “SKU Rationalization – This is a fancy word the “Suits” use to describe to when you decide to discontinue a product – not because it isn’t selling, but for another reason that benefits the product line, brand, market, etc.

It is something that is rarely done in the Cigar Business, most Companies just keep items on their Price Sheets forever until the end up as a stranded product. The end result is companies with way too many products, with their distribution split and a lot of stress on their production planning and inventory control.

Imo, this is a terrible strategy in most cases.

One of our most successful brands is Umbagog and again this year it is up significantly, including the Short & Fat and the Churchill.

However imo, the brand does not need these 2 vitolas in the long-term and I have another vitola I would like to add in Y2023 that I believe smokes better and will provide even more diversity for smokers.

Typically a company would just add a 7th vitola, but this does not make sense to me from a biz perspective. So I ceased production of these 2 SKUs early this year to make room for a new future one.

We have a few of both left for those accounts interested, we are not “closing” them out as both continue to do well. I suspect all of them will be in the wild in the next week or so.

I am posting this as a “heads up” for consumers for whom these may be their favs to afford them the opportunity to source before they disappear.“